My Plan to Take Over the World

My goal this year isn't to lose weight. If that's an added bonus to everything else I do this year, fine, but I'm pretty happy where I'm at. I did all my weight loss last year (about 20 pounds! wahoo!) so this year is the year to get really fit. I want to be strong. I want to be INVINCIBLE!! {insert evil laugh here}

In order to keep up and improve my level of fitness, I've decided on a handful of fitness goals I can work towards. Here they are in no certain order:

1. Continuously be able to run at least 3 miles.

2. Be able to run at least 6 miles without stopping by the end of the running season.

3. Do 15 full pushups at a time by the end of the year, with a constant progression of 1 per month (I can currently do 4).

4. Be able to do 4 chin-ups by the end of the year (1 every 3 months).

5. Hike up to the waterfall in Adam's Canyon without having to stop and rest.

which naturally leads me to...

6. Take over the world by Christmas. How hard could it be?

Streamlined Woman on the Go

I've tried about a billion times to consistently workout early in the morning. Usually I don't even do it for 1 day. I get really pumped up the night before and then when I wake up I'm way too sleepy and end up getting up late like usual.

The thing is, I feel much better working out at night. It's my peak time. But, it's just so hard to come home after working all day long, hungry and tired, and squeeze in a workout. Especially when there's a hungry husband waiting for some grub. The last few weeks have been especially tough for some reason and I knew I had to stop slacking off or I'd lose my motivation completely.

Seth has been working the extreme early shift at work (as in, he has to be to work by 6:00am). For a few weeks I'd been waking up with his alarm and drifting in and out of consciousness for the next hour & a half or so until my alarm went off. I finally decided I might as well get up when he does seeing as how I'm usually more awake then, than I am when I wake up again on my own later. Plus if I actually got up that early, not only would I have time to work out, but I'd also have plenty of time to get ready so I wouldn't be rushing around all morning.

So far I've gotten up early to work out every single day since last Wednesday (well, not counting the weekends... I have to take a break sometime). Somehow the workouts seem harder. Probably because I'm not completely awake yet and my body isn't as warmed up as usual. But I'm slowly getting used to it. Sadly, the apartment gym doesn't open that early so I'm stuck doing DVDs. Which isn't so bad, but I really liked doing the spinning bike and working in a run on the treadmill on occasion (ok I only ran on the treadmill like 3 times).

The good news is, my mornings go a lot smoother now. I get my exercising out of the way so I don't have to worry about doing it later, I'm more consistent, and I actually leave for work on time. The last 2 days I even had time to make myself a smoothie! And I don't feel any more tired or worn out during the day. I guess my point is, if you've got the motivation, working out in the morning is a pretty good way to go. We'll see how long I can keep this up!

Progress

I know I've already done a post on my fitness progress, but I wanted to do another one... this time with pictures. I took some 'before' pictures on May 11th of this year and took some pictures today so I could compare them. To date I've lost 11.5 pounds, 5" on my waist, 4" on my stomach and at least an inch everywhere else. I don't know that anybody can really tell but me. Also, after posting these pictures of myself on here, I've gained a new respect for others whom I've seen do the same. It doesn't ever seem like that big of a deal until it's YOU. By the way, I hate the 'before' pictures. A lot.

Before

After

Before

After

One last thing I wanted to share that has helped my progress is actually tracking what I eat. I always thought this was a huge waste of time. Just eat healthy stuff and you'll be fine, right? Well, I started tracking what I eat (I use SparkPeople) and I was astonished at how many calories I was eating. I swear I eat healthy stuff and try to be really good and I still have a hard time staying within my daily calorie allotment. No wonder I'd gained so much! I figured out that my body normally burns about 1700 calories a day. So I'd have to stick to that number just to stay where I'm at! I've been trying to stay a little below that and throw in some exercise to burn extra, but it's tough! Do you realize it takes a deficit of 3500 calories to lose a pound?! No wonder it takes so damn long to lose all this flab!

Anyway, I hope you all aren't getting annoyed with all my blah blah blah about fitness crap and running and other such things. I write this stuff because it's important to me and it's a way to keep myself motivated. That, and I think Seth is going to lose it if I talk about my awesome new muscles one more time...